Prominent lawyer fined S$6k for contempt of court

SINGAPORE — Criminal lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam was on Monday (Aug 7) ordered to pay a S$6,000 fine, after the High Court found him guilty of contempt of court over his Facebook post on the death sentence of his former client.

Thuraisingam, 42, had posted a 22-line poem alleging, among other things, that “million dollar men” including judges, ministers and lawyers have “turned blind”, “pretending not to see” a law that is “cruel and unjust” — an allusion to the death penalty. He also alleged that the men were “accumulators of wealth” more concerned with money and material goods.

Thuraisingam has had four clients put on death row.

The Facebook post — now deleted — was published in the wee hours of May 19, the same day Thuraisingam’s client, Muhammad Ridzuan Mohd Ali, 32, was due to be executed for trafficking 72.5g of heroin. Last December, Ridzuan’s challenge against the constitutionality of the Misuse of Drugs Act was overturned, and a plea for clemency was rejected in May this year.

On May 26, the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) had filed a complaint against Thuraisingam, stating that his post was contemptuous in nature.

“The statement poses a real risk of undermining public confidence in the administration of justice in Singapore as it alleges that judges have subordinated their judicial duty to financial greed,” the AGC said.

On June 5, Thuraisingam publicly apologised on Facebook.

Urging the court to impose a fine of S$10,000, the prosecution, led by Senior State Counsel Hui Choon Kuen and Deputy Senior State Counsel Tan Sze Yao, said that Thuraisingam’s duty as “an officer of the court” was “to defend the courts against unjust criticism... and yet he has done the exact opposite”.

They also argued that being Ridzuan’s lawyer, his statement would have carried more weight than that of a member of the public.

Lastly, the prosecution charged that Thuraisingam had “also employed words of a particularly gratuitous and offensive bent, by comparing judges to ‘rats’ who think only about acquiring new cars”.

Arguing for a lower fine, Senior Counsel Ang Cheng Hock, who represented Thuraisingam, said that the lawyer was genuinely remorseful about his actions, having apologised to the AGC, and taken down the post.

In an affidavit, Thuraisingam had said that he saw Ridzuan for the last time on April 26, and that meeting continued to haunt him.

The court also heard that at the time the Facebook post was written and published, Thuraisingam was “extremely upset” and “demoralised as there was nothing more he could do for Ridzuan”.

“(Thuraisingam) was emotionally distraught. He was not in the right frame of mind,” Mr Ang argued.

He added that it was “never the intention” of his client to “allege that the judges had subordinated their judicial duty to financial greed”, and Thuraisingam had meant to say “the upper echelons of society … did not care about (the death penalty) as it generally only affected the poor”.

In mitigation, Mr Ang pointed to Thuraisingam’s long history of voluntary work in taking on cases under the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme and the Legal Assistance Scheme for Capital Offences.

While Justice See Kee Oon accepted that Thuraisingam was “unlikely to reoffend”, he was “not persuaded” that Thuraisingam’s defence warranted a discharge. “It is unacceptable that he should have resorted to such recklessly irresponsible conduct. It is foreseeable that readers of the statement, read in the context of the entire poem, would be more likely to be persuaded to take his views seriously given his background and standing.” he said.

Calling the Facebook post “openly and unreservedly scandalising of the courts”, Justice See said that even though Thuraisingam had removed it, “the nature of how information circulates on the Internet and social media, it will mean that the damage can never be completely undone”.

Writing on Facebook after his hearing, Thuraisingam said that he was “overwhelmed by the emotions of losing a very young client to the gallows for drug trafficking after a long hard battle in court”.

“I lashed out very wrongly at some people who I respect a lot and should never have criticised. I am sorry for letting down so many people who would have expected more from me,” he added.